The Weekly 2000 AD Extra: The Case For ‘Brink’ Being The Greatest ‘2000 AD’ Strip Ever In 15 Images

It’s the best thing in 2000 AD for decades and Brink continues to amaze… with a couple of masterful revelations in the latest series epitomising everything that’s so great about this series. So I figured I’d play show and tell…

Every week I do The Weekly 2000 AD here at Comicon, giving you an idea of just how good, how essential, this nearly 50-year-old anthology is, week in and week out.

And Brink by Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard has been a particular favourite ever since it began – the sixth book is currently running in the weekly Prog. I’ve gone from calling it the best thing from 2000 AD in a decade, to the best thing in this century, to one of the greatest things 2000 AD has ever published, right up there for me with Halo Jones, Nemesis, the finest of Judge Dredd, and whatever else you care to mention in an illustrious publishing history that’s not short of truly great works.

It’s just a masterpiece of a sci-fi procedural series, getting better and better as the story evolves, each new book building on the brilliance of the last.

But in Book Six, ‘Consumed’, we’ve had two moments that epitomise all that’s so damn great about it. And here I’m going to play show and tell with you, illustrating just why it’s truly a modern classic.

To give you the general gist of Brink, it’s basically the best TV sci-fi/cop/mystery series you’ve yet to see on your screens, just with the sort of impossible budget that makes anything and everything possible.

The set-up, like all greats, is simple. Humanity has fled a ravaged Earth and now lives on a number of cramped, overcrowded deep-space Habitats – where the Habitat Security Division tries to keep order. Into this comes HSD cop Bridget Kurtis, who finds herself investigating the mysterious Sect activity on various Habs, something that seems to prey on the fragile psyches of those living on the brink, where the tensions of the claustrophobic conditions breed simmering madness and conspiracies. Add into that the ‘Mercury Event’, where all contact with the colonies on and around Mercury was lost, right back in Book One, and you have just the finest of tense and fraught dramas.

Book Six could be seen, just as Book Five was, as an interlude of sorts. We have Bridge and her team en route to meeting up with a HabSec special taskforce tasked with investigating why Mercury’s gone dark, with Kurtis’s Sect experience integral to their mission. On their way, they have a stopover on Belleholme Hab. So, a chance to chill out and for Bonner to work on his golf game, right? Nope, not at all, it’s been nothing of the sort. (Well, apart from Bonner getting a few rounds in.)

The first of the huge reveals, the things tying it all together is a direct callback to Book Five, where we sidestepped and went back to the events of Book One, only this time seeing things through the eyes of Nolan Maslow, investigative journalist. He got dragged into Sect activity and met his end. So, that’s his story-arc over, right?

Oh no, not in the slightest. Not with something this good.

Instead, we get this incredible sequence of brilliance, as the HabSec team are searching for Kurtis, who’s been taken by the Red River Killer who’s been haunting the shadows all the way through Consumed. Bonner, Lind, and the ex-HabSec officer, now PI, Castenanda are hunting down Casenada’s anonymous client who had her looking out for Bridge. And they find her – Janice Bowrey.

Wait a minute? Who? Janice Bowrey? Who the hell is Janice Bowrey?

Except Janice Bowery isn’t who she says she is, she’s someone very unexpected…

And that’s how you do a WOW moment.

Suddenly, the events of Book 5 are pulled into the now – again, a case of you can never underestimate just how cleverly Abnett and Culbard control Brink, how they pull everything together, how it’s all important, all going towards making this the best drama of 2000 AD.

Because Lauren Maslow has all of Nolan’s files, and they’re going to play an incendiary role in things going forwards we have to assume…

Okay then, that’s the first big reveal that we’ve had in Brink Book 6: Consumed.

Now, time for the second, and it’s even better…

It happened in Prog 2401, episode 23 of the series, where we’re at a point where it’s accelerating to its conclusion. Kurtis is missing, abducted by the Red River Killer, and the rest of her team are desperately trying to find her.

Which is when Lind makes a breakthrough and everything gets connected once more…

Oh yes, Rejoicers. An element of Brink society that’s been there since the start, an annoying religious group spreading good vibes in a terrible situation. Completely harmless kooks were led to believe.

And now it turns out that the Red River Killer has been going undetected all this time by playing the part of a Rejoicer.

Lind’s revelation that the Red River Killer’s been hiding in plain sight as a Rejoicer makes perfect sense. One of those easy things to throw in the story to explain just how the Red River Killer can pass unnoticed so easily. But this is Abnett and Culbard. They’re not ones to take an easy out. No, they’re all about connecting story threads, planting seeds.

That in itself is a wow moment. But then I remembered something in a previous episode, Kurtis chasing a lead, just before she gets abducted in episode 17…

Oh yes. There it is. The Red River Killer Rejoicer – the clothes, the hood, the handbell. WOW again.

That’s how you do it, that’s how writer and artist build a story, where it’s all there, where every twist and turn has been meticulously mapped out to make this one such a thrilling drama, such a rewarding read.

But then I had a thought… if the Red River Killer Rejoicer’s there when Kurtis gets abducted… would there be more subtle, cheeky, oh so clever references as well? Had Abnett and Culbard planted seeds through ‘Consumed’ pointing us towards the identity of the Red River Killer?

So, I went back to the beginning. And oh yes, they most certainly did, all the way back to episode 1, laying it all out for us, setting a trail for us to maybe follow, the clues all there to show us the way. It is, quite frankly, quite bloody brilliant and, in its way, the very essence of what makes Brink the greatest 2000 AD strip.

Episode 1…

Episode 2… Castanada and those bells…

More from episode 2… 

Episode 4… just a little background figure there outside Castanada’s place…

And more from Episode 4… the sound of those bells once more…

Episode 6… just there in the background again… but always there, always hunting…

Episode 11… again with the Red River Killer’s lair, again with the bells…

Episode 12… oh yes, someone was most definitely ringing…

So, there you go. 15 images in a show and tell from the latest Brink series.

Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard, take a bow. You’re doing things that are just so clever, so damn good here. And just these couple of wow moments should give you some idea of just how clever it all is, two examples illustrative of the depth of what’s happening here, what’s happening at every stage of Brink. It’s all important, it all feeds into the story, and it’s a damn fine story indeed.

You can, and you should, get hold of Books 1-5 of Brink. They’re truly essential reading.

Brink Book 6: Consumed is currently running in 2000 AD.